Allan Kaprow (1927-2006), an artist who coined the term “happenings” in the late 1950s, published “Assemblage, Environments, and Happenings.”
Links: Artist, Books

1966

Artist Frank Cieciorka (1939-2008) created his image of a black panther, which became a symbol for the Black Panther Party, formed in Oakland, California. The image first appeared in the SNCC’s newspaper, the Movement.
Links: Artist, USA, Black History, SF Bay Area

Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (b.1886), painter and engraver born in Tokyo, Ja-pan, died in Zurich, Switz. He applied French oil techniques to Japanese-style paintings. In 2006 Phyllis Birnbaum authored “Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita – The Artist Caught Between East and West.”
Links: Artist, Japan, Switzerland, Biography

Valerie Solanas, founder of the Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM), and author of the "SCUM Manifesto," shot Andy Warhol with a .32 automatic in his New York film studio, known as The Factory. Warhol survived but Solanas was judged insane and served three years in a psychiatric prison. She died in 1988 at 52 in a welfare hotel in San Francisco of bronchial pneumonia and emphysema. The 1996 film "I Shot Andy Warhol" was made by Mary Harron and featured Lili Taylor as Solanas.
Links: Artist, USA, NYC, Women, Film

Architects Doug Michels (1943-2003) and Chip Lord founded the Ant Farm in SF. In 1974 they created "Cadillac Ranch," a sculpture of 10 planted Cadillacs, in Amarillo, Texas. In 1975 they created the performance work "Media Burn," in which Michels drove a Cadillac through a pyramid of burning television sets. Ant Farm disbanded in 1978.
Links: Artist, USA, SF, Architect

Don Freeman (1908-1978), painter and children’s writer, authored "Corduroy," the story of a teddy bear named Corduroy, who is bought in a department store by a girl named Lisa.
Links: Artist, USA, Writer, Books

1968

In Italy Michelangelo Pistoletto, artist, rolled around Turin his giant ball of pulped newspaper. The exploit was captured on film.
Links: Artist, Italy

1968

Cecile Nelken (1917-2009), sculptor and publisher, founded Artweek, the first US West Coast weekly art newspaper.
Links: Artist, USA, Magazine

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) created his Suite 347, a series of aquatints and etchings.
Links: Artist, France

1969 Feb 8

Mexican graphic artist Leopoldo Mendez (b.1902) died. His work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism.
Links: Artist, Mexico

1969 Mar 14

Ben Shahn (1898), Lithuanian-born American painter and photographer, died in NYC. Much of his photography of done in New York’s Lower East Side and Greenwich Village.
Links: Artist, USA, Photography

1969 Jun 12

Alexander Deyneka (b.1899), Soviet Russian artist, died. he came from a family of railroad workers and started out as a police photographer after graduating from art school. He made mosaics in the 1930s for Mayakovskaya metro station in central Moscow.
Links: Artist, Russia

The painting "Nativity" by Caravaggio was stolen from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Peter Watson, English novelist, later wrote "The Caravaggio Conspiracy," an account of his 1981-1982 attempt to recover the work.
Links: Artist, Sicily

1969 Oct 21

Picasso, Spanish artist, painted "Painter and Infant," an allegory of artistic transmission from one generation to the next.
Links: Artist

1969 Nov

Interview magazine was founded by artist Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga. It was dedicated to the cult of celebrity which fascinated Warhol, and featured cutting-edge graphics and interviews of celebrities.
Links: Artist, USA, Magazine

1969

Fernando Botero (b.1932), surrealist Colombian painter, created "The Butcher's Table," a pig's head laughing at his own slaughter.
Links: Artist, Colombia

1969

Artists Douglas Huebler (1924-1997), Robert Barry (b.1936) and Lawrence Weiner (b.1942) held an exhibition in NYC that was credited by a critic in 1971 as originating the conceptual art movement. This was an emphasis on art as an idea rather than an object in a reaction to the pop and op art of the 1960s.
Links: Artist, USA, NYC

London artists Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore wrote their four “Laws of Sculptors.” They later became known simply as Gilbert and George.
Links: Artist, Britain

1969

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) created his "Carnal Clock" series of collages.
Links: Artist, USA

1969

Artist Sol LeWitt wrote his seminal article "Sentences on Conceptual Art" and stated that "Ideas can be works of art."
Links: Artist, USA

1969

Clifford Irving (b.1930), American writer, published "Fake," the story of Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory (1906-1976). The int'l. de Hory scam became public in 1967. Irving and De Hory were featured in the 1975 Orson Welles film "F" for Fake.
Links: Artist, USA, Hungary, Books

Euphemia Charlton Fortune (b.1885), artist, died. She was born in Edinburgh but received most of her training in the US and became one of the West Coast’s most acclaimed painters.
Links: Artist, USA, California

1969

John Altoon (b.1925), American painter, died of a heart attack at age 43. He painted in an abstract expressionist style with later surrealist undercurrents. Hs works included "Untitled" (1959), "Untitled (Harper Series)" (1964), and "Untitled ANI-42" (1968).
Links: Artist, USA

1970 Feb 25

Mark Rothko (b.1903), painter, committed suicide in NYC. He was born in Dvinsk, Russia, which is now Daugavpils, Latvia, and his family moved to Portland, Ore., in 1913. His work moved to abstraction in the 1940s. The execution of his will provoked a long drawn out court case. His daughter charged the executors and the owner of Rothko’s gallery with conspiracy and conflict of interest, and won. A 1998 show was accompanied by the book "Mark Rothko" by Jeffrey Weiss with contributions by John Cage, Carol-Mancusi-Ungaro, Barbara Novak, Brian O’Doherty, Mark Rosenthal and Jessica Stewart.
Links: Artist, USA, NYC, Suicide

Robert Smithson (1938-1973), American minimalist land artist, created his “Spiral Jetty,” a 1,500 foot coil of rock extending from the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Links: Artist, USA

1970

NY performance artist Joan Jonas in “Mirror Check” stood naked before an audience inspecting her body with a small round mirror in a silent commentary on women’s fixation with self-image.
Links: Artist, NYC, Women

1971 Mar 13

Rockwell Kent (b.1882), artist, illustrator and printmaker, died in New York. He was a member of the rugged realist school of landscape painters. In the 1930s he created a set of illustrations for "Moby Dick." In 1935 he authored “Salamina,” a memoir of his first Arctic winter (1931–32) painting and exploring while based in the settlement of Igdlorssuit, Greenland. In 1960 he donated 80 paintings and 800 watercolors to the people of the Soviet Union.
Links: Artist, USA, New York

An El Greco sketch, "The Immaculate Conception," stolen in Spain 35 years earlier, was recovered in New York City by the FBI.
Links: Artist, USA, NYC, FBI

1971 Nov 16

Edie Sedgwick, actress and model for Andy Warhol, died in California from a barbiturate overdose.
Links: Artist, USA, Theater, Drugs

1971

Claudio Bravo (b.1936), Chilean-born Moroccan based artist, created a surrealist still life of an assemblage of light bulbs.
Links: Artist, Chile, Morocco

1971

Fritz Koenig (b.1924), German Sculptor, created a 27-foot-tall brass ball and called it "The Sphere." It was installed at the NYC World Trade Center and was the only piece of art to survive.
Links: Artist, Germany

Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), Australia’s best known modernist, created a piece called “Snake.” It was composed of 1,620 individual panels.
Links: Australia, Artist

1971

The Rothko Chapel, an interfaith chapel in Houston, Texas, was built around the paintings of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Composer Morton Feldman wrote his work “Rothko Chapel” for the occasion. In 1964 Rothko was commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil (also founders of the nearby Menil Collection) to create a meditative space filled with his paintings.
Links: Artist, USA, Composer, Texas, Museum

1971

In SF a 30-foot-tall sculpture by Peter Voulkos was installed outside the “Hall of Justice.” In 2011 it underwent a $35,000 refurbishment.
Links: Artist, USA, Chicago

1972 Aug 15

The Italian town of Grazie di Curtatone began its Int’l. Street Painting Festival. This revived a 16th century practice by itinerant artists who traveled from village to village for religious and folk festivals.
Links: Artist, Italy

1972

Vito Acconci (b.1940), Brooklyn-based artist, created his work "Seed Bed," in which the artist masturbated under the raised gallery floor.
Links: Artist, USA

Chen Yifei (b.1946), Shanghai born artist, painted "Eulogy of the Yellow River," as China’s Yellow River dried up for the 1st time in history before reaching the Yellow Sea. From 1980 to 1996 he worked in the US and became known as the Norman Rockwell of China.
Links: Artist, China, Environment